Posted on 08/10/2008 8:03:42 PM PDT by stan_sipple
At the University of Chicago no man looms larger than Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate who led the “Chicago school” of economics and who died in 2006. When the university announced plans for a $200m economics institute in May, it seemed fitting that the centre should be named after him. But a small war broke out. On June 6th more than 100 faculty members wrote to the university’s president to protest against the institute. Armed with academia’s common weapons, indignation and verbosity, they said they were all “disturbed by the ideological and disciplinary preference implied by the university’s massive support for the economic and political doctrines that have extended from Friedman’s work”, and pleaded for time for discussion. The university has ploughed ahead. The institute was launched in July, though the search for a director continues. Many fear that the university will be seen as intellectually homogenous. Susan Gzesh, who leads its human-rights programme, says that Latin Americans “don’t associate human rights with the University of Chicago; they associate it with Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys.” The institute, she says, may reinforce a monolithic view of the university.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
You have got to be kidding me.
Where is the barf alert for this one?
Makes sense. Dr. Friedman was a great defender of freedom.
Wonder what Susan Gzesh things about the portraits of Mao at the Olympic games.
I don’t remember if this was the Economist article, or another (and I’m going to bed so I don’t care to check), but someone published the list of professors who signed the petition. It was long, and most notable for having very few economics professors included. I had a good chuckle over it.
I’ll bet there was heavy representation from Black Studies and Women’s Studies, and very few from the sciences or Engineering.
My view of the University of Chicago declined considerably when I learned it hands out six-figure patronage jobs to affirmative action hires.
sorry, this certainly deserved one. Stalinist university profs should be pretty familiar with intellectual monoliths.
You’re on the right track, but if I recall correctly, UoC is too “intelligent” to refer to them that way . . . it was more like “Associate Professor of Eastern Amphibian Social Sciences,” or some such nonsense.
The University of Chicago does not have an engineering college or school. Such programs are considered too practical for most academics.
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert,” Friedman once said, “in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.”
Milton Friedman, the father of the all-volunteer army, was a great man. He deserves all the honors he gets, and more.
Leftist morons from subjects such as music and Latin American studies think they are fit to evaluate Friedman’s intellectual standing????
That’s one of the greatest problems of the post-modern university: every leftist douchebag thinks that their deep “study” (sic) of Gramschi and Foucault suddenly renders them fit to make judgments about every subject under the sun.
No one will imagine that U. of Chicago is “intellectually homogeneous” b/c it is well known that the university which had such greats as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek has also employed such bozos as Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. SO, don’t worry, U. of Chicago leftists, no one will imagine that the influence of Friedman and Hayek has been pervasive or comprehensive at your sorry little university. It is well known that there are moronic leftists just about everywhere.......
Ping for my namesake! Nothing wrong with intellectual homogeneity in economics when you’re right!
They may not have an Engineering School, but they do have a strong Physics Department, especially in High Energy Physics.
Re “The Trouble With Friedman”.
Hey, if I have caused the liberals and the Left and the Communists any “trouble.”
GOOD! Then I’m doing something right!
I’m Max Friedman, and I approve this message.
(Milton was not my uncle, unfortunately)
(However, I’m thankfully not related to Tom Friedman of the NY Times).
Soulmates of the Duke 88.
ping
the commies at Stanford have been fighting the Hoover Institute for years too.
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